Aid to retired religious helps communities hit by Katrina

Published: 2006-06-06

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- When the Federal Emergency Management Agency was still in disarray after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Louisiana and Mississippi coast last year, the National Religious Retirement Office quietly went into gear with relief plans for elderly men and women religious caught in the storm or displaced by it. Since last September it has given slightly more than $1 million in hurricane relief grants to religious communities in Louisiana and Mississippi, said Precious Blood Sister Janice Bader, the retirement office's project director of retirement services. The Benedictine monks of St. Joseph Abbey in St. Benedict, La., "didn't have to evacuate, but they were basically isolated and without electricity for, I think, two or three weeks," Sister Janice told Catholic News Service. A retirement office grant helped the monks get a much-needed generator and a vehicle for the handicapped, she said. The Discalced Carmelite nuns of Covington, La., got a grant for immediate post-hurricane needs and another to repair damages to their monastery.

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